After losing a "sure" bet, Polymarket Bettors are angry and claiming they were scammed. Without much they can do in terms of action against Polymarket they've decided the next step is to try and Nuke Polymarkets online reputation.

To that end they've taken to TrustPilot to sabotage the rating for the company.

https://preview.redd.it/wikw4fouittd1.png?1066&format=png&auto=webp&s=f66edd06807beb47cec117b8d71d409be11f0452

What Happened?

Polymarket hosted a Market with the title: Will Israel invade Lebanon in September? Well on the night of September 30th (US Time) Israel decided to invade Lebanon for a series of "operations" to push Hezbollah away from the border.

https://preview.redd.it/a26nmnd1kttd1.png?1012&format=png&auto=webp&s=5f87c0da486804c8448836a96359357b2a3fed76

Although the exact wording of "Invasion" was widespread across news outlets, this market would ultimately resolve to no.

Wait, what it resolved to no? Why?

The reason it resolved no is probably up for dispute but it likely is a result of the market not "technically" meeting the created "Rules".

https://preview.redd.it/70qn49dkkttd1.png?724&format=png&auto=webp&s=09c76ce668361c977b91c2dd1bb31cccc24273ad

Although the market certainly met the title requirements for "yes". No bettors argued that although Israel sent soldiers into Lebanon they didn't announce that they wanted to take control of any part of "Lebanon". So the market "should result in No".

The Dispute and UMA:

UMA calls itself a 'Decentralized Truth Machine', among the many things UMA does for Polymarket one of their most notorious functions is handling Polymarket disputes. The simplified version of how it works is:

1. A dispute occurs.
2. Users make arguments on the UMA discord for why they think the market should resolve a certain way.
3. UMA Token Holders stake their tokens and vote on what the outcome of the dispute should be.
4. Some time later votes are revealed and the resolution most in favor is the Disputed Resolution.

Ignoring all obvious problems with this system like: UMA Holders being incentivized to vote for the outcome that financially favors them, and large UMA Holders being able to trade the market knowing how it will likely resolve.

The biggest and most glaring flaw in the system is the centralization of UMA tokenholders. In fact just two people at UMA control enough of the stake to lock down any dispute (if they are in agreement). Of course this sounds like a glaring red flag so these two holders have as a result divided their tokens between a number of wallets to make voting "appear more decentralized".

The Israel/Lebanon Dispute.

In the Israel Lebanon Dispute although a majority of unique voters thought that the market should result to [YES]. The two UMA whales and a number of other smaller voters thought the market should result to [NO].

As a result the market: 'Will Israel invade Lebanon in September?' ended in [NO] and all [YES] Voters ended up losing their "sure bet".

The biggest individual loser was someone new to Polymarket who poured ~$420K onto the platform thinking the bet was all but guaranteed.

https://preview.redd.it/2w3mn0tmottd1.png?644&format=png&auto=webp&s=ba5f3d2238b3f54b8ea0b9f9799c8f9f8cde7b56

The Aftermath

Beyond the immediate reaction of bettors nuking the Polymarket TrustPilot score. Losing bettors from the market are claiming that the Polymarket CEO committed a crime and deserves to be prosecuted.

https://preview.redd.it/ceufo1pyottd1.png?829&format=png&auto=webp&s=b428223c20f0a827e8f01943915cc6c4337a13ee

Will anything else happen? Probably not... given this is just one of many controversial markets on the platform. Given a week or two this market like the rest will probably be forgotten, and news entities will continue to present Polymarket odds like the numbers are somehow a valid representation of real world odds.